Using Finger Touch Types to Interact with Electronic Devices

ABSTRACT

An electronic device includes a touch-sensitive surface, for example a touch pad or touch screen. The user interacts with the touch-sensitive surface, producing touch interactions. The resulting actions taken depend at least in part on the touch type. For example, the same touch interactions performed by three different touch types of a finger pad, a finger nail and a knuckle, may result in the execution of different actions.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

This invention relates generally to interacting with electronic devicesvia a touch-sensitive surface.

2. Description of the Related Art

Many touch pads and touch screens today are able to support a small setof gestures. For example, one finger is typically used to manipulate acursor or to scroll the display. Another example is using two fingers ina pinching manner to zoom in and out of content, such as a photograph ormap. However, this is a gross simplification of what fingers and handsare capable of doing. Fingers are diverse appendages, both in theirmotor capabilities and their anatomical composition. Furthermore,fingers and hands can also be used to manipulate tools, in addition tomaking gestures themselves.

Thus, there is a need for better utilization of the capabilities offingers and hands to control interactions with electronic devices.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention allows users to interact with touch-sensitivesurfaces in a manner that distinguishes different touch types. Forexample, the same touch interactions performed by a finger pad, a fingernail or a knuckle may result in the execution of different actions onthe electronic device.

In one approach, a user uses his finger(s) to interact with anelectronic device via a touch-sensitive surface, such as a touch pad ora touch screen. A finger touch interaction between the user and thetouch-sensitive surface is detected. A finger touch type for the touchinteraction is also determined. An action is taken on the electronicdevice in response to the finger touch interaction and finger touchtype. That is, the same finger touch interaction can result in theexecution of one action for one finger touch type and a different actionfor a different finger touch type.

In one aspect, finger touch types are classified at least in part basedon which part of the finger makes contact, for example finger pad versusfinger nail versus knuckle. In some cases, the finger pad is used as theprimary touch type, while the finger nail and/or knuckle are used toimplement secondary or auxiliary functions. The secondary or auxiliaryfunctions may be less commonly used, or more complex, or requireadditional user input. In another aspect, the finger pad may be used toimplement functions that are already familiar to users, while the fingernail and/or knuckle are used to implement new or unfamiliar functions.In yet another aspect, different finger touch types may correspond todifferent inputs types for other input devices. For example, one fingertouch type might correspond roughly to right mouse clicks and anotherfinger touch type to left mouse clicks.

Specific examples include activating a pop-up of a contextual menu basedon finger touch type, distinguishing interactions requiring selectionbased on finger touch type, activating different drawing modes based onfinger touch type, and taking different game actions based on fingertouch type.

Other aspects of the invention include methods, devices, systems,components and applications related to the approaches described above.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention has other advantages and features which will be morereadily apparent from the following detailed description of theinvention and the appended claims, when taken in conjunction with theaccompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an electronic device according to thepresent invention.

FIG. 2 is a flow diagram illustrating finger touch interaction using thedevice of FIG. 1.

FIG. 3 illustrates a classification of different finger touch types.

FIG. 4 is a spectrogram of three types of finger touches.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an example classifier.

FIGS. 6A-6C illustrate examples where a finger touch type is used toactivate a pop-up of a contextual menu.

FIGS. 7A-7C illustrate examples where a finger touch type is used forinteractions requiring selection.

FIGS. 8A-8E illustrate examples where a finger touch type is used toselect different drawing modes.

FIGS. 9A-9B illustrate examples where a finger touch type is used toselect different actions that can be taken in a game.

The figures depict embodiments of the present invention for purposes ofillustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize fromthe following discussion that alternative embodiments of the structuresand methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing fromthe principles of the invention described herein.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

The figures and the following description relate to preferredembodiments by way of illustration only. It should be noted that fromthe following discussion, alternative embodiments of the structures andmethods disclosed herein will be readily recognized as viablealternatives that may be employed without departing from the principlesof what is claimed.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an electronic device 100 according to thepresent invention. The device 100 includes a touch-sensitive surface110, for example a touch pad or touch screen. It also includes computingresources, such as processor 102, memory 104 and data storage 106 (e.g.,an optical drive, a magnetic media hard drive or a solid state drive).Detection circuitry 112 provides an interface between thetouch-sensitive surface 110 and the rest of the device 100. Instructions124 (e.g., software), when executed by the processor 102, cause thedevice to perform certain functions. In this example, instructions 124include a touch analysis module that analyzes the user interactions withthe touch-sensitive surface 110. The instructions 124 also allow theprocessor 102 to control a display 120 and to perform other actions onthe electronic device.

In a common architecture, the data storage 106 includes amachine-readable medium which stores the main body of instructions 124(e.g., software). The instructions 124 may also reside, completely or atleast partially, within the memory 104 or within the processor 102(e.g., within a processor's cache memory) during execution. The memory104 and the processor 102 also constitute machine-readable media.

In this example, the different components communicate using a commonbus, although other communication mechanisms could be used. As oneexample, the processor 102 could act as a hub with direct access orcontrol over each of the other components.

The device 100 may be a server computer, a client computer, a personalcomputer (PC), or any device capable of executing instructions 124(sequential or otherwise) that specify actions to be taken by thatdevice. Further, while only a single device is illustrated, the term“device” shall also be taken to include any collection of devices thatindividually or jointly execute instructions 124 to perform any one ormore of the methodologies discussed herein. The same is true for each ofthe individual components. For example, the processor 102 may be amulticore processor, or multiple processors working in a coordinatedfashion. It may also be or include a central processing unit (CPU), agraphics processing unit (GPU), a network processing unit (NPU), adigital signal processor (DSP), one or more application specificintegrated circuits (ASICs), or combinations of the foregoing. Thememory 104 and data storage 106 may be dedicated to individualprocessors, shared by many processors, or a single processor may beserved by many memories and data storage.

As one example, the device 100 could be a self-contained mobile device,such as a cell phone or tablet computer with a touch screen. In thatcase, the touch screen serves as both the touch-sensitive surface 110and the display 120. As another example, the device 100 could beimplemented in a distributed fashion over a network. The processor 102could be part of a cloud-based offering (e.g., renting processor timefrom a cloud offering), the data storage 106 could be network attachedstorage or other distributed or shared data storage, and the memory 104could similarly be distributed or shared. The touch-sensitive surface110 and display 120 could be user I/O devices to allow the user tointeract with the different networked components.

FIG. 2 is a flow diagram illustrating touch interaction using device100. The user uses his finger(s) to interact with the touch-sensitivesurface 110. For example, he may use his finger to touch an elementdisplayed on the device, or to touch-and-drag an element, or totouch-and-drag his finger over a certain region. These interactions aremeant to instruct the electronic device to perform correspondingactions. The touch-sensitive surface 110 and detection circuitry 112detect 210 this finger touch interaction. For example, thetouch-sensitive surface may be based on capacitive, optical, resistive,electric field, acoustic or other technologies that form the underlyingbasis for the touch interaction. Whatever the underlying principle ofoperation, touches on the touch-sensitive surface will result insignals. However, these raw signals typically are not directly useablein a digital computing environment. For example, the signals may beanalog in nature. The detection circuitry 112 typically provides anintermediate stage to process and/or condition these signals so thatthey are suitable for use in a digital computing environment.

A touch analysis module (implemented by instructions 124 in thisexample) analyzes 220 the detected finger touch interaction as aninitial step to determine the appropriate actions to take. In thisexample, the analysis includes determining 224 the finger touch type, inaddition to other analysis that may be performed.

FIG. 3 illustrates one possible classification of finger touch types. Ata first level, finger touch types may be subdivided into “uni-touch” and“multi-touch.” Uni-touch occurs when the touch interaction is defined byinteraction with a single portion of a single finger, although theinteraction could occur over time. Examples of uni-touch include asimple touch (e.g., a single tap), touch-and-drag, and double-touch(e.g., a double-tap—two taps in quick succession). In multi-touch, thetouch interaction is defined by combinations of different fingers orfinger parts. For example, a touch interaction where two fingers aresimultaneously touching is a multi-touch. Another example would be whendifferent parts of the same finger are used, either simultaneously orover time.

Finger touch types can also be classified according to which part of thefinger touches. In FIG. 3, the uni-touch category is further subdividedaccording to the contacting finger part: finger pad, finger nail orknuckle. The finger pad is the fleshy part around the tip of the finger.It includes both the fleshy tip and the fleshy region from the tip tothe first joint. The knuckle refers to any of the finger joints. Theterm “finger” is also meant to include the thumb. It should beunderstood that the finger itself is not required to be used fortouching; similar touches may be produced in other ways. For example,the “finger pad” touch type is really a class of touch interactions thathave similar characteristics as those produced by a finger pad touchingthe touch-sensitive surface, but the actual touching object may be aman-made instrument or a gloved hand or covered finger, so long as thetouching characteristics are similar enough to a finger pad so as tofall within the class. The multi-touch category could also be subdividedin an analogous fashion.

Using the classification system of FIG. 3, a finger touch type of fingerpad uni-touch means that the contacting part is the finger pad and thetouch interaction is uni-touch rather than multi-touch. The categoriesshown in FIG. 3 are not exhaustive of all possible finger touch types.Nor is it the only possible classification.

In one approach, the finger touch type is determined in part by aclassification of vibro-acoustic signals from the finger touchinteraction. When an object strikes a certain material, vibro-acousticwaves propagate outward through the material or along the surface of thematerial. Typically, touch-sensitive surface 110 uses rigid materials,such as plastic or glass, which both quickly distribute and faithfullypreserve the signal. As such, when respective finger parts touch orcontact the surface of the touch-sensitive surface 110, vibro-acousticresponses are produced. The vibro-acoustic characteristics of therespective finger parts are unique, mirroring their unique anatomicalcompositions.

For example, FIG. 4 illustrates a spectrogram of three types of fingertouches. As shown in FIG. 4, the finger pad, knuckle, and finger nailproduce different vibro-acoustic responses.

Referring back to FIG. 1, the detection circuitry 112 may includecircuitry and acoustic components to detect the vibro-acoustic signal.For example, these components may be arranged at a rear side of thetouch-sensitive surface so that the vibro-acoustic signal caused by thetouch interaction can be captured. The detection circuitry 112 can betriggered by the onset of the vibro-acoustic signal resulting from thetouch interaction. To capture the vibro-acoustic signal, the detectioncircuitry 112 may include one or more impact sensors, vibration sensors,accelerometers, strain gauges, or acoustic sensors such as a condensermicrophone, a piezoelectric microphone, MEMS microphone and the like.Once the vibro-acoustic signal has been captured, a vibro-acousticclassifier (mostly implemented as part of instructions 124 in FIG. 1)processes the vibro-acoustic signal to determine the finger touch type.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an example classifier. It includes asegmentation module 522, a conversion module 524, a feature extractionmodule 526, and a classification module 528. This particular example isbased on vibro-acoustics, although other phenomenon can also be used.The segmentation module 522 (implemented as part of detection circuitry112 in FIG. 1) samples the vibro-acoustic signal in the background, forexample, at a sampling rate of 96 kHz using a rolling buffer of 4096samples of the vibro-acoustic signal. When a touch event occurs, theconversion module 524 performs a Fourier transform on the sampledtime-dependent vibro-acoustic signal in the buffer to produce afrequency domain representation. For example, the Fourier transform ofthis window may produce 2048 bands of frequency power. Thevibro-acoustic classifier 520 further takes in a series of featuresgenerated by the feature extraction module 526. These features includedown-sampling the time and frequency domain data into additional vectors(e.g., buckets of ten), providing a different aliasing. In addition,additional time-domain features may be calculated from thevibro-acoustic signal, such as zero crossings, standard deviation of theabsolute amplitude, and the center of mass for both the segmented inputsignal and the Fourier transformed signal. The classification module 528classifies the vibro-acoustic signal using these features as well asother non-acoustic features, for example the major and minor axes oftouch and capacitive response to determine the finger touch type (atleast with respect to which part of the finger makes contact).

In one exemplary embodiment, the classification module 528 isimplemented with a support vector machine (SVM) for featureclassification. The SVM is a supervised learning model with associatedlearning algorithms that analyze data and recognize patterns, used forclassification and regression analysis. To aid classification, the usercan provide supplemental training samples to the vibro-acousticclassifier.

Returning to FIG. 2, the touch analysis module 124 analyzes 220 thefinger touch interaction to determine the finger touch type. Based onthis analysis, the processor 102 then takes the appropriate actions 230.The appropriate action depends on the finger touch interaction (e.g.,touch, touch-and-drag, etc.) but it also depends on the finger touchtype. The same finger touch interaction can result in different actionsby processor 102, for different finger touch types. For example, a touchby the finger pad, a touch by the finger nail and a touch by the knucklemay trigger three different actions.

This approach allows the same touch interaction to control more than oneaction. This can be desirable for various reasons. First, it increasesthe number of available actions for a given set of touch interactions.For example, if finger touch types are not distinguished, then a singletap can be used for only one purpose, because a single tap by a fingerpad, a single tap by a finger nail and a single tap by a knuckle cannotbe distinguished. However, if all three of these finger touch types canbe distinguished, then a single tap can be used for three differentpurposes, depending on the finger touch type.

Conversely, for a given number of actions, this approach can reduce thenumber of user inputs needed to reach that action. Continuing, the aboveexample, if three actions are desired, by distinguishing finger touchtypes, the user will be able to initiate the action by a single motion—asingle tap. If finger touch types are not distinguished, then morecomplex motions or a deeper decision tree may be required. For example,without different finger touch types, the user might be required tofirst make a single tap to bring up a menu of the three choices. Hewould then make a second touch to choose from the menu.

In one approach, the finger pad uni-touch type is used as the primaryfinger touch type. The other finger touch types, such as finger nailuni-touch, knuckle uni-touch, and multi-touch types, may be used assecondary touch types. Users may already be familiar with finger paduni-touch motions, so these motions may remain the same, with othertouch types used to implement additional functions. Alternately, theuser may select which finger touch type is the primary type. Forexample, users with long finger nails may configure their devices sothat finger nail uni-touch is their primary finger touch type.

In addition, users may also be familiar with other types of inputdevices. These other input devices may also have different inputs types,which can be mapped to different finger touch types. For example, theright click and left click functions on a computer mouse may be mappedto two different finger touch types, one corresponding to right clickand the other to left click.

FIGS. 6-9 illustrate some examples. In these examples, thetouch-sensitive surface is a touch screen.

FIGS. 6A-6C illustrate examples where a finger pad touch type is used toactivate one function, and a knuckle or finger nail touch type is usedto activate a pop-up of a contextual menu. In FIG. 6A, a finger padtouches an element displayed on the electronic device. This activates afunction associated with the element. For example, it might open theelement (e.g., a photo, folder or file). It might select the element(e.g., a song or contact). It might launch an application associatedwith the element. If the element is a button control, it might activatethe function associated with that button. If the element represents aphone number, it might dial the phone number. If the element is a webaddress, it might go to that web page.

However, in FIGS. 6B-6C, other finger touch types are used to pop-up acontextual menu. In FIG. 6B, the element represents a photo (orgraphic). Touch by a knuckle pops-up the contextual menu with choicesof: email, print, post, delete. Other implementations could offer otherchoices, e.g., modify, duplicate, resize, copy, cut, share, fastforward, rewind, pause, play, stop, exit, slow, resume, save, bookmark,open, duplicate, and/or post to web. In FIG. 6C, the element is anemail. Touch by a knuckle opens a contextual menu with the followingoptions: reply, forward, move, delete, and the like (e.g., reply all,print, print, archive, copy, cut, save).

Other examples of contextual menus will be apparent. For example, theelement could represent a digital document and menu choices couldinclude email, open, copy, cut, preview, move, print, share, email,modify, duplicate, post, remove, archive, trash, and/or delete. If theelement were an application, the menu choices might include email, open,copy, cut, preview, move, print, share, email, modify, duplicate, postto web, and/or delete. If the element represents a link, the menuchoices might include email, open, copy, cut, preview, open in newwindow, open in new tab, save, bookmark, print, and/or share.

FIGS. 7A-7C illustrate examples where a finger pad touch type is used toactivate one function and a knuckle or finger nail touch type can beused for interactions requiring selection. FIG. 7A concerns a selectionof text. A finger pad may be used to scroll (i.e., translate a displaywindow) through text. Using a knuckle or finger nail, a user may touchand drag over a region of text to select the text, as shown in FIG. 7A.In FIG. 7B, a knuckle or finger nail is used to touch-and-drag over aregion of an image to lasso select an arbitrary shaped sub-region of theimage; whereas the same motion by a finger pad would be used to move theimage around on the display.

Alternately, a user may use a knuckle or finger nail to touch-and-dragover a region of an image to select a rectangular sub-region of theimage. Upon completion of this selection action, a contextual menu couldautomatically appear. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 7C, followingan image region selection, a contextual menu could appear with thefollowing options: copy, crop, modify, save, etc. As another example,following a text selection (as in FIG. 7A), a contextual menu couldappear with the following options: copy, cut, paste, search, delete,etc.

FIGS. 8A-8E illustrate examples where different finger touch typescorrespond to different drawing modes. In FIGS. 8A-C, the finger touchinteraction is touch-and-dragging, which results in drawing a line onthe touch screen. However, the finger pad is used as a thick brush, thefinger nail as a fine marker, and the knuckle for erasing. In FIG. 8D-E,the finger pad is used as a marker for highlighting the selected textregion while the knuckle is used for smudging.

FIGS. 9A-9B illustrate examples where different finger touch typescorrespond to different actions that can be taken in a game. In FIG. 9A,using an onscreen movement control (e.g., virtual joy stick or arrowpad), a finger pad is used for regular in-game character (i.e., player)movement. If a knuckle or finger nail is used, as illustrated in FIG.9B, the directional player movement may be performed in a crouched orother alternate position or movement speed. As another example, a fingerpad may be used to fire a primary weapon and a knuckle or finger nail tofire an alternate weapon. As a final example, a touch with a finger nailmay be used to run. In addition, a touch of the knuckle or finger nail(i.e., a tap) may be used to jump an in-game character.

Although the detailed description contains many specifics, these shouldnot be construed as limiting the scope of the invention but merely asillustrating different examples and aspects of the invention. It shouldbe appreciated that the scope of the invention includes otherembodiments not discussed in detail above. Various other modifications,changes and variations which will be apparent to those skilled in theart may be made in the arrangement, operation and details of the methodand apparatus of the present invention disclosed herein withoutdeparting from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined in theappended claims. Therefore, the scope of the invention should bedetermined by the appended claims and their legal equivalents.

The term “module” is not meant to be limited to a specific physicalform. Depending on the specific application, modules can be implementedas hardware, firmware, software, and/or combinations of these.Furthermore, different modules can share common components or even beimplemented by the same components. There may or may not be a clearboundary between different modules.

Depending on the form of the modules, the “coupling” between modules mayalso take different forms. Dedicated circuitry can be coupled to eachother by hardwiring or by accessing a common register or memorylocation, for example. Software “coupling” can occur by any number ofways to pass information between software components (or betweensoftware and hardware, if that is the case). The term “coupling” ismeant to include all of these and is not meant to be limited to ahardwired permanent connection between two components. In addition,there may be intervening elements. For example, when two elements aredescribed as being coupled to each other, this does not imply that theelements are directly coupled to each other nor does it preclude the useof other elements between the two.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method of interaction between a user and anelectronic device having a touch-sensitive surface, the methodcomprising: detecting a finger touch interaction between the user andthe touch-sensitive surface; determining a finger touch type for thedetected finger touch interaction; and executing an action on theelectronic device in response to the finger touch interaction and fingertouch type, wherein the same finger touch interaction results inexecution of a first action for a first finger touch type and results inexecution of a second action for a second finger touch type.
 2. Themethod of claim 1 wherein the first finger touch type is finger paduni-touch.
 3. The method of claim 2 wherein the first finger touch typeis finger pad uni-touch, and the second finger touch type is finger nailuni-touch.
 4. The method of claim 2 wherein the first finger touch typeis finger pad uni-touch, and the second finger touch type is knuckleuni-touch.
 5. The method of claim 2 wherein at least one of the fingertouch types is multi-touch.
 6. The method of claim 2 wherein the fingertouch interaction is touching an element displayed on the electronicdevice, and touching the element results in the first action of openingthe element when the first finger touch type is finger pad uni-touch. 7.The method of claim 2 wherein the finger touch interaction is touchingan element displayed on the electronic device, and touching the elementresults in the first action of selecting the element when the firstfinger touch type is finger pad uni-touch.
 8. The method of claim 2wherein the finger touch interaction is touching an element representingan application, and touching the element results in the first action oflaunching the application when the first finger touch type is finger paduni-touch.
 9. The method of claim 2 wherein the finger touch interactionis touching a button control displayed on the electronic device, andtouching the button control results in the first action of activatingthe button control when the first finger touch type is finger paduni-touch.
 10. The method of claim 2 wherein the finger touchinteraction is touching an element displayed on the electronic device,and touching the element results in the first action of taking an actionassociated with the element when the first finger touch type is fingerpad uni-touch.
 11. The method of claim 2 wherein the finger touchinteraction is touching an element representing a phone number, andtouching the element results in the first action of dialing the phonenumber when the first finger touch type is finger pad uni-touch.
 12. Themethod of claim 2 wherein the finger touch interaction is touching anelement representing a web address, and touching the element results inthe first action of going to the web address when the first finger touchtype is finger pad uni-touch.
 13. The method of claim 2 wherein thefinger touch interaction is touch-and-dragging an element displayed onthe electronic device, and touch-and-dragging the element results in thefirst action of moving the element on the display when the first fingertouch type is finger pad uni-touch.
 14. The method of claim 2 whereinthe finger touch interaction is touch-and-dragging a slider controldisplayed on the electronic device, and touch-and-dragging the slidercontrol results in the first action of operating the slider control whenthe first finger touch type is finger pad uni-touch.
 15. The method ofclaim 2 wherein the second action is executed less frequently than thefirst action.
 16. The method of claim 2 wherein the second actionrequires additional user input.
 17. The method of claim 2 wherein thesecond action is more complex than the first action.
 18. The method ofclaim 2 wherein the finger touch interaction is touching an elementdisplayed on the electronic device, and touching the element results inthe second action of displaying a contextual menu with choices ofactions for the element.
 19. The method of claim 18 wherein the elementrepresents an email, and the menu choices include at least two from:reply, reply all, forward, print, archive, copy, cut, move, save, anddelete.
 20. The method of claim 18 wherein the element represents aphoto or graphic, and the menu choices include at least two from: email,print, modify, crop, resize, copy, cut, share, move, email, open,duplicate, post to web, and delete.
 21. The method of claim 18 whereinthe element represents a video or animated content, and the menu choicesinclude at least two from: email, modify, resize, copy, cut, share, fastforward, rewind, pause, play, stop, exit, slow, resume, save, bookmark,email, open, duplicate, post to web, and delete.
 22. The method of claim18 wherein the element represents a digital document, and the menuchoices include at least two from: email, open, copy, cut, preview,move, print, share, modify, duplicate, post, remove, archive, trash, anddelete.
 23. The method of claim 18 wherein the element represents anapplication, and the menu choices include at least two from: email,open, copy, cut, preview, move, print, share, email, modify, duplicate,post to web, and delete.
 24. The method of claim 18 wherein the elementrepresents a link, and the menu choices include at least two from:email, open, copy, cut, preview, open in new window, open in new tab,save, bookmark, print, and share.
 25. The method of claim 2 wherein thefinger touch interaction is touch-and-dragging, and touch-and-draggingresults in the second action of selecting elements displayed on theelectronic device.
 26. The method of claim 25 wherein touch-and-draggingresults in the second action of selecting text displayed on theelectronic device.
 27. The method of claim 2 wherein the finger touchinteraction is touch-and-dragging, and touch-and-dragging results in thesecond action of lassoing a sub-region of text displayed on theelectronic device.
 28. The method of claim 2 wherein the finger touchinteraction is touch-and-dragging, and touch-and-dragging results in thesecond action of lassoing a sub-region of an image displayed on theelectronic device.
 29. The method of claim 2 wherein the finger touchinteraction is touch-and-dragging, and touch-and-dragging results in thefirst action of drawing in a first drawing mode for the first fingertouch type and results in the second action of drawing in a seconddrawing mode for the second finger touch type.
 30. The method of claim 2wherein the finger touch interaction is touch-and-dragging, andtouch-and-dragging results in the first action of drawing for the firstfinger touch type and results in the second action of erasing for thesecond finger touch type.
 31. The method of claim 2 wherein the firstaction is an action taken in a game played on the electronic device andthe second action is a different action taken in the game, wherein theuser has a choice of which action to take.
 32. The method of claim 31wherein the finger touch interaction results in the first action offiring a first weapon in the game for the first finger touch type andresults in the second action of firing a second weapon in the game forthe second finger touch type.
 33. The method of claim 31 wherein thefinger touch interaction results in the first action of making a firsttype of character movement in the game for the first finger touch typeand results in the second action of making a second type of charactermovement in the game for the second finger touch type.
 34. The method ofclaim 1 wherein the user can interact with the electronic device usinganother input device, the input device having a first input type and asecond input type, actions resulting from the first input typecorrespond to actions for the first finger touch type, and actionsresulting from the second input type correspond to actions for thesecond finger touch type.
 35. The method of claim 34 wherein the usercan interact with the electronic device using a mouse with right clickand left click, actions resulting from right click of the mousecorrespond to actions for the first finger touch type, and actionsresulting from left click of the mouse correspond to actions for thesecond finger touch type.
 36. The method of claim 1 wherein thetouch-sensitive surface is a touch screen.
 37. A machine-readabletangible storage medium having stored thereon data representingsequences of instructions, which when executed by an electronic devicehaving a touch-sensitive surface, cause the electronic device to performa method comprising the steps of: detecting a finger touch interactionbetween the user and the touch-sensitive surface; determining a fingertouch type for the detected finger touch interaction; and executing anaction on the electronic device in response to the finger touchinteraction and finger touch type, wherein the same finger touchinteraction results in execution of a first action for a first fingertouch type and results in execution of a second action for a secondfinger touch type.
 38. An electronic device comprising: atouch-sensitive surface; detection circuitry coupled to thetouch-sensitive surface, for detecting a finger touch interaction withthe touch-sensitive surface; a touch analysis module coupled to thedetection circuitry, for determining a finger touch type for thedetected finger touch interaction; and a processor coupled to the touchanalysis module, the processor for executing an action on the electronicdevice in response to the finger touch interaction and finger touchtype, wherein the same finger touch interaction results in execution ofa first action for a first finger touch type and results in execution ofa second action for a second finger touch type.
 39. An electronic devicecomprising: a touch-sensitive surface; means for detecting a fingertouch interaction between the user and the touch-sensitive surface;means for determining a finger touch type for the detected finger touchinteraction; and means for executing an action on the electronic devicein response to the finger touch interaction and finger touch type,wherein the same finger touch interaction results in execution of afirst action for a first finger touch type and results in execution of asecond action for a second finger touch type.